Chasing Down The Echoes (of the things we never said)
by Nagia
Summary: Alright. Fine. No point worrying about the empty room, the key by the back door, or if Cloud's coming back at all. (Yuffie knows nine different jokes about denial, and none of them seem funny right now.) Same continuity as "Together As The Lights Fall".


Cloud's room peeks out at her from behind a half-open door. A half-open door she'd walked by that morning — when it had been closed. So Yuffie walks right in, strides to the wardrobe (open, too) and looks it up and down.

Not even dust there or in the dresser.

* * *

Tifa's smiles flicker. A glint of teeth, a curve of lip, and gone again. If any of them lasted any longer, they'd _look_ fake. Every so often, she stops what she's doing and casts a quick look at the back door.

Cloud's spare key hangs beside it on a peg.

* * *

Tifa heads to the bar during dinner.

Yuffie tells herself, in her head so Marlene and Denzel won't hear, that it doesn't _mean_ anything. This is just how Tuesday nights go when Cloud isn't around.

She knows nine different jokes about denial, and none of them seem funny right now.

* * *

Yuffie helps the kids with their homework, then sends them off for their baths. At bedtime, she crouches at the end of Marlene's bed with her back leg pressed against the footboard.

"Aren't you two getting a little old for bedtime stories?" She snickers, then asks, "Wait, what am I saying?"

They fire the usual conflicting requests at her, fast like little fast things. Strangely enough, the ugly-face-making-contest and complaints about each other's choices stop the moment she agrees that each gets a bedtime story to themselves.

Denzel mutters that he still has to listen to Marlene's story, but she wants dragons and dragons are cool, so he quiets down quick.

His might be scarier, so she tells his story first. It's the one about the time she and Vincent had to run from a Midgar Zolom with only one healthy chocobo between them. With no saddles. Denzel laughs at the way everything kept getting worse before he rolls onto his side and closes his eyes.

It's kind of weird that she can look back and laugh. But it's not like she'd try to explain that whole pants-wetting terror thing. Maybe if he ever asks for a scary story.

Yeah, right, and next time he asks for a _funny_ story, she'll see how ridiculous she can make Sephiroth sound.

With Marlene, Yuffie makes wavy noodle motions with her arms. "A nice dragon, a nice dragon... like Leviathan?"

Marlene considers this. "And a princess."

"Huh. I am completely stumped," she says, like there aren't fourteen thousand stories about Leviathan and Ashura. "Wait, wait, ever hear the one about Princess Ashura and the Grass-Cutting Sword?"

She wraps it up like it's a just-so story, like it's all about why learning to fight is ladylike in Wutai. There's more to the old fairytale, but she's not Chekhov. Marlene can figure out the story underneath the story on her own time (hopefully never). At least Marlene liked it, and now she's got a day or so to come up with better ones.

Marlene looks down at her hands, tightening them into loose, experimental fists before Yuffie noogies her and turns out the light. She's getting old enough to start training, at least in Wutai, but no need to stress Tifa out about it.

She's just closed the bedroom door behind her when she realizes that she assumed a next time. Lots of next times.

* * *

The bar's a little rowdier than usual. Of course it is: it's a Tuesday and Cloud isn't here.

Alright. Fine. No point worrying about the empty room, the key by the back door, or if Cloud's coming back at all. Definitely no point worrying what the hell all of this even means. It's a Tuesday, Cloud's not here, and those losers in the back corner need to quiet the fuck down or get the fuck out.

Yuffie should tell them so. Loud and clear and while cracking her knuckles. If she needs, she can introduce their teeth to the sidewalk.

* * *

"I think we can leave the rest for tomorrow," Tifa says after they blow through three-quarters of the ever-present mountain of bar dishes. There are some new _I'm so drunk I forgot how to use my hands_ hairline cracks in a couple of highballs.

Yuffie turns her head to look for the back door. Maybe the highballs have _Hi, sometimes I forget I can break heavy oak with my bare hands, and I'll be your bartender tonight_ cracks.

Tifa watches her. Not guiltily, at least.

So Yuffie says, "Well, they're probably not going to murder us in our sleep, anyway."

* * *

Upstairs, Yuffie closes the door to Cloud's room and follows Tifa to bed.

They collapse onto the sheets. Yuffie hooks one leg around Tifa's, twining them together at the ankle. She rests her head against Tifa's bicep. They stay like that until Tifa pushes herself up off her shoulders, a little awkardly, to let Yuffie snake an arm around behind her.

Streetlights and moonlight flicker in through the windows. Yuffie slides her fingers along Tifa's hair. Tifa traces lazy circles along Yuffie's hip. The ceiling fan spins slowly, noiselessly above them.

"So come on," she says. "Tell me about it."

* * *

Tifa's hand goes still on her hip. She stiffens — not pulling away yet, not exactly, but she's not comfortable. So Yuffie casually takes her arm back and launches into a sit-up-straight-in-bed, toe-curlingly huge yawn, which forces them to uncoil.

Tifa presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. She sighs but doesn't say anything after that.

Yuffie didn't exactly expect the words to come tumbling out in a rush, but it'd be nice to know exactly what she's going to be beating Cloud up for.

The silence between them seems to stretch on forever and ever, like getting stitches sewn in. Tifa draws in a deep breath before she breaks it.

"He wanted to know why."

Yuffie snorts a laugh at that. "Why what? Why the radio station sucks? Why command materia is yellow?"

"Why _you_."

Tifa looks long and hard at her, intense and serious. And Yuffie treasures that look — she does, she really does — but she's pretty sure that's the dumbest question Cloud's ever asked in his life.

She almost wants to ask _Did you tell him he was being a moron?_, but instead she says, "Clearly, beacuse I am hot like a burning thing."

"He asked what we were going to tell the kids."

"Okay, seriously? 'We can't break up our weirdo-pretendy-part-time-not-relationship, because what will we tell the _children_?' He actually pulled that one?"

Tifa frowns, gathers an extra armful of blanket, and rolls onto her stomach. "It's a legitimate question, Yuffie."

"I figured we'd just sit them down someday and point out that sometimes when two people love each other very much..."

Tifa doesn't smile. Okay, so she's on her stomach and not facing Yuffie, but the tense line of her shoulders doesn't ease.

Yuffie opens her mouth to add more, to say something — anything, anything at all, doesn't matter what so long as it fixes it. She manages to stop herself from saying anything monumentally stupid, takes a deep breath, and tries for sincerity.

"So what did you say?"

Tifa shrugs. "I told him that I was sorry to hurt him, and what we'll tell Marlene is between us and Barret."

"But it's still bothering you." Which is a reason all its own to go introduce the back of Cloud's head to a clue.

"Was it selfish?"

Right. That's a new reason. Yuffie takes a deep breath, then another. She finally says, "No. You're not being selfish."

In Yuffie's opinion, it's selfish and ridiculous of Cloud to think he can vanish for days, weeks, even months at a time and come back to find everything the same. She opens her mouth to explain that, but Tifa finally finally turns over, re-adjusting her pillows to nestle up against the headboard.

"Of course you'd say that."

The tone is lighter. Teasing. The knot in Yuffie's chest unclenches a little.

"Well, yeah," she replies and slides her leg along Tifa's again, rests her head on Tifa's shoulder. After a while, she asks, "Hey, Teef?"

"Hm?"

"Can the heart-to-heart with Marlene and Denzel maybe wait until _we_ have us figured out?"

"I think so."

Yuffie's eyes are closed, but she can hear Tifa's smile. So she adds, very quietly, "And if you ever figure out why people fall in love, write it down and sell it."

Tifa's voice dances the edge between playful and thoughtful: "Love, huh?"

Yuffie tries to say, "You know it is," casually, like she's just flirting. She doesn't quite manage it, but Tifa doesn't draw attention to just how much she's really saying.

Tifa's lips quirk up, but she says, gently, "And you say we haven't figured it out yet."

"Well, I think the rest can wait for tomorrow." Yuffie pops another of those huge take-over-the-bed yawns, but she's smiling, and it's not an _I won this round_ smile.

"It's not going to murder us in our sleep, anyway." And with that Tifa unceremoniously dumps half the sheets onto Yuffie's side of the bed.

* * *

Tifa bakes breakfast the next morning. If she's preoccupied, it's the normal 'having to function much too early after closing the bar' kind. Yuffie sneaks up behind her and drops a few handfuls of berries into the batter.

Tifa cocks a hip just so and looks over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow.

Yuffie leans in close enough to bump hips and touches her lip with one finger, rests her other hand on Tifa's waist.

"It's early. Shouldn't you be in bed?"

"They have school today."

"So shove that in the oven and go back to bed. I'll take them."

* * *

After repeated assurances that Yuffie will not let breakfast burn, Tifa stumbles back up the stairs to bed. Yuffie splorches batter into muffin tins, shoves the tins in the oven, and wakes the kids.

She makes it downstairs just in time to pull the muffins out of the oven — perfectly golden brown, not burnt, ha! Vindication! — and set them to cool on a plate.

Yuffie keeps one eye on the clock and the other on a materia set she's putting together. The kids come down in their own time, cleaned and dressed. They're so freshly scrubbed Denzel hasn't had time to muss his hair all to hell.

"Tifa made muffins and went back to bed," she tells them, handing each kid a couple of muffins and pouring glasses of milk.

At ten past seven, she collects plates and glasses, puts them in the sink, and shooes the kids toward the garage. Yuffie grabs the spare key to Tifa's van, heavy and solid in her hand as a ring or a materia.

Cloud's spare housekey hangs on the peg just beside it.

Yuffie pauses. Then, grinning, she decides. She whistles tunelessly as the door closes behind her.


End file.
